Mon, 21 Aug 2006

Day 1: Shanghai (上海) // at 21:00

An hour and a half this morning in Changi airporty in Singapore, time
enough to walk around and look at the pools of Koi and orchid gardens,
then back on the plane for the flight to Shanghai (上海).

Long queues at Chinese immigration, video cameras everwhere filming the
arrivals in the hall, then quickly through a very prefunctory customs
check and out of the aiport. Do we change money insider or outside
the immigration? The rates inside didn't look so good so we waited
until outside — should have known, the rates outside were exactly
the same. Luggage and money, now time for transport — woohoo,
the maglev train! Only one small problem, we couldn't find it!

The sign that we thought pointed outside to the Maglev train actually
meant go upstairs to the second floor! Luckily a woman for one of the
hotels tried to get us a taxi, then told us how to find the train station
once we explained our predicament.

RMB40 and an aircraft
boarding-pass stub and we were onto the train. Very ordinary looking
on the inside, apart from the groovy illuminated signs that tells you
how fast you're travelling; 100, 200, 300, 400 — ticking away up to
432km/hr! Only a little bit of noise and shaking, it was all quite
amazing really. Eight minutes later and we were in the station in the
centre of the city, this is definitely how it should be to get from an
airport to the city!

Struggled across to the metro station and puzzled our way through
tickets; machine or person? The machine has English text, but is
slightly confusing, as every ticket machine in every city always seems
to the visitor. We made it though, two RMB4 tickets and onto the train, then across
Pudong, under the river and off at the correct station of Middle Hunan
road — Yay!

I'll blame the northern hemisphere! Subconsciously navigating by the
sun we came up blinking into daylight from the metro station,
confidently turned left and strode off in precisely the opposite
direction to where the hotel was! Luckily it was only half a block
before the rational part kicked in and had us make an about-face, then
down the side street to the Nanjing hotel and inside to checkin and
get a well-earned shower!

After getting established in the Nanjing hotel we headed back out for
an exploratory walk, once again I got confused about north and south,
that subconscious is a dangerous thing! Nanjing Lu is one big
pedestrian mall, the crowds and shops and stonework making it all look
vaguely reminiscent of Bourke street mall in Melbourne — but maybe
that's just because I don't spend much time in Bourke street mall!
Maybe not so similar after all, the architecture and neon signs all
straight from the 21st century.

Early in the evening we met the rest of the Intrepid group for the
first time, handed over our wads of cash for the “local
contribution” then headed out dinner. Damian and Amy from down near
Geelong, Peter and Rachel from Ballarat, Steven and Kristine from
Toronto in Canada, and Julie from Adelaide, to be led around the
country by Dan.

Dan quickly proved his leadership abilities by taking us around a few
blocks to a favourite restaurant where he ordered the first of what
turned out to be many fantastic meals in China! Of course no meal and
no holiday is complete without beer, so there was a highly symbolic
“first beer of the trip” in the restaurant, followed by a couple of
very expensive — for Shanghai (上海) and China — beers at an outdoor
café on Nanjing Lu. At RMB25 per bottle, we were definitely paying for
the pleasure of sitting around outdoors in the warm evening air and
watching the world go by.